Follow these tips to improve scientists in your studies

The return to classes is the return of the exams, work and daily routine of thousands of students. How can we achieve greater academic performance? This science says.

This week have started classes at many colleges and universities Spanish. With the famous 'back to school', also they return the dreaded exams, hateful daily routine. For many students, the start of the course is much more than the cost of September. It is stress. It is fatigue. And it assumed, unfortunately, the end of summer.

Back to school means again sink the elbows. However, it is not always succeeds in school. Until the very Santiago Ramon y Canal, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1906, he had his problems when he was still a student at school tender.

Ramon y Canal Nobel suspended several times when he was student Cues ta Jose Ramon Alfonso in his blog that the Maronite neuroscience had serious difficulties in his student days. Which then was considered one of the leading researchers of the twentieth century, even it suspended several subjects and accumulate approved by the hair.

Canal hated the education they received. Qualified based on memorization "as a regime of terror" knowledge. And it appears that, a period after their experiences, have not changed much in the schools. Learn lists and agendas of memory seems to be the preferred method, although not always work. For this reason, scientists want to review some tips to improve your life and performance as students.

Follow these tips to improve scientists in your studies

If you sleep more, you shall bring better grades

Yes, all we have done. "Study day, be constant, keep your ways." But originate the examinations, and it's usual that we caught the bull. We try to memorize in a few days what we have done during the course. This includes sleeping less (or no sleep), abuse of energy drinks and in extreme cases, putting a candle to see if we are lucky.

Unfortunately, this behavior will probably lead us to get a poor performance in our tests, and in some cases, as happened to the poor Canal, to suspend subjects. A study conducted in 2012 and published in the Eastern Economic Journal, could give a scientific solution to take better notes.

As we know, the hours of sleep are essential for our health care. Sleeping more or less associated with major medical problems, it leads to the appearance of serious cardiovascular disease. But the dream could also have a crucial effect on our academic performance.

Sleep seven hours improves the performance academic Seguing research from Brigham Young University, students aged between sixteen and eighteen must sleep seven hours to get the best possible grades in their examinations. After analyzing the data of sleep and school performance of more than 1,700 students, scientists realized that as the years approved, the students slumbered less times (lower left panel).

Then they performed various academic tests to check what the optimal sleep time. In the case of pupils aged 16 and 18, needed sleep seven hours to improve their test scores. These hours of sleep were also higher in younger students who needed to sleep a little longer to perform better, as shown in the graph to the right:

Sleep is important in processes such as memory consolidation, learning and growth. Sleeping well is essential, since lack of sleep leads to physiological, behavioral and precognitive problems that directly affect the brain.

Our brain can be severely affected by the lack of hours sleep Pero what mental region most damaged by lack of sleep? A study published in Sleep Medicine Reviews suggested that the neural networks of the frontal cortex could be seriously affected in the event that we did not sleep enough. His role in known as executive functions allows us to work with certain objectives before, brand forecasts of consequences or magistrate what is good and what is not.

In other words, if we did not sleep our mental capacities to study, learn and perform our projects successfully minimized. This would be the reason why we need a time of optimal sleep to achieve better academic performance, as concluded the first investigation.

Forget about memorizing

As a student, I had a teacher who said that the more I learned the student was at the time of an examination. As contradictory as it may seem, this idea is consistent with the views of scientific Canal, who thought not by much memorizing learn more.

His theories are based on research conducted in 2011 and published in the prestigious journal Science. This study compared the effectiveness of three methods to study very common and known to all:

Memorize and perform repetitions of the topics to be learned Draw diagrams and schematics to connect the ideas that we have to study Assessments and examinations of learning

To the researchers' surprise, the third option is the most effective in studying. Although rote memorization is repeated again and again by students of half the world, and that the systems diagrams are widely used by teachers, the fact is that conducting assessment test seems the most appropriate methodology for improvement up to 50% the amount of learning content.

In order to determine their results, the scientists divided 200 college students into three groups, which were to use one of three methods of study for a week. After seven days, the researchers conducted tests to students to find out what they learned.

As explained the scientist Jeffrey Karnataka in an interview in The New York Times, "our learning is based on retrieving the information we store in the brain, ie, it is based on rebuilding our information." Their deductions will certainly deliver very important clues on how to study for best results.

Do the energy drinks and food supplements?

It is possible that, in times of stress and nerves, resort to anything not suspend. One of these quick fixes is based on buy food supplements that by advertising, "help our memory." Well, most supplements have phosphorylation or Maurine as 'star ingredients'.

Energy drinks are a real time bomb for your agency for purpose? According to the European Food Safety Agency, the components of these supplements for memory does not help improve our cognitive abilities. In other words, no phosphorylation or Maurine rote serve to enhance our ability, despite major marketing campaigns for these products.

And if these supplements do not work, they help in some energy drinks? As explained Jose Manuel Lopez Nicholas in his blog, all you succeed in making these products will consume a real bomb of caffeine and sugar. And is that these drinks, which consume 68% of adolescents in Europe, and have been linked to augmented heart rate, tremors, increased blood pressure and in situations more severe convulsions and sudden death the patients.

In short, there are no magic cures for studying. Try to be as orderly as possible, get enough sleep, besides working and review learning, are some of the key that gives science for student success. The rest? They are not only involved in major advertising campaigns will not improve your performance stories.